"Informative and highly entertaining." Living France "Compulsive reading for all of us who have a love-hate affair with our nearest continental neighbour: Eccentric France. All the facts and trivia that you never needed to know are there. To make a tonne of boudin (blood sausage), for example, you'll need 440 litres of blood, 65kg of fat and 65 sets of intestines. Bon appetit! As you'd expect, food and drink underpin a rich selection of museums and festivals, including the Frog Festival at Saint-Andre-le-Bouchoux, the Sardine Museum in Sete and the Pig Trotter Fair in Sainte-Menehould. And not forgetting the Pig Squealing Championship at Trie-sur-Baise, where human contestants have to imitate the noise a pig makes at various stages in its life, starting off as a piglet and followed by noisy lovemaking. Don't try too hard: the prize is a whole pig, ready prepared, including the head and feet." The Times "This is the sort of book I love. Pick it up and open it, anywhere - and there will be some fascinating piece of information on each of its 294 pages. It quite truly is a 'guide to mad, magical and marvelous France' with plenty of maps for you to locate it all...If you are not careful the washing up will not have been dine, the dog not taken for its walk, etc as one intriguing entry leads you to another and another and another." Motoring & Leisure
